


The Facelift Sessions

by tamibrandt



Series: Alice In Chains on Tour '93 [7]
Category: Alice in Chains
Genre: Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Layne Staley topping from the bottom, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:53:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 12,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28074267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tamibrandt/pseuds/tamibrandt
Summary: Q: Can you tell me how you got the name for the album?Layne: Um, basically . . . right around the time we were recording -- prior to the recording we dumped all our tunes and started rewriting, and we had done that about three times.  Wrote a whole set and then played for a while and then dumped that set and wrote some stuff that was better and dumped that and wrote stuff that was better.  We were kinda like giving ourselves a facelift musically.-- from Tony Stark Presents:  The Mind-Altering Experience, Pine Knob Music Theater, 1991.
Relationships: Jerry Cantrell/Courtney Clarke (mentioned), Jerry Cantrell/Layne Staley, Layne Staley/Demri Perrott (mentioned)
Series: Alice In Chains on Tour '93 [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1989022
Comments: 62
Kudos: 10





	1. We Die Young

**_We Die Young_ **   
_Take another hit_   
_And bury your brother_

The band returned to Seattle and cut the demos at London Bridge Studios with Rick Parashar. The demo tape was sent to Los Angeles to Dave Jerden ahead of the band traveling to Capitol Recording Studio in Hollywood. Alice In Chains had become a top priority for Columbia Records and they had immediately rushed them into booking studio time between Hollywood and Seattle. The boys were running twenty-four-seven: recording during the day and playing gigs at night. They were young enough that the constant running on little sleep didn’t bother them too much.

The songs on the demo Jerden received were _We Die Young_ , _Man in the Box_ , and six other songs that sounded fucking amazing to Jerden. The band hadn’t decided what style they were going for yet so the demo had a bit of everything from punk, heavy metal, and everything in between to try and find a sound. So Jerden had the idea to cut out everything the boys weren’t.

When Alice In Chains came along, Jerden and his engineer Ronnie Champagne were working on Social Distortion’s first album and putting finishing touches on Jane’s Addiction’s album Ritual de lo Habitual. The studio sessions for Facelift started at London Bridge Studios. Columbia Records gave the band a production budget of a hundred and fifty to two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

Ronnie Champagne brought a cassette of the then-unreleased Jane’s Addiction album, consisting of unfinished mixes. The album made an impression on the band. They wanted to deconstruct the Jane’s Addiction album backward and forwards, wanting to know everything about it. Mike Starr made copies of the cassette and gave them to friends. The band devoured that record. So while they were working on Facelift they were listening to a rough version of an album that hadn’t been released yet.

Sean had broken his hand a month before during an altercation at a party one evening. As a result, he couldn’t play drums. Jerry asked Mother Love Bone’s drummer Greg Gilmore to fill in for Sean, but it didn’t work out. Sean sat there playing with one hand, guiding Greg through it. But, with the way Sean played, he had developed a heavy kick drum which was the basis of the Alice In Chains sound, the bass and the kick drum which coupled with the low chords that Jerry played rounded it out. Greg was a great drummer for Mother Love Bone but he just wasn’t hitting the kick drum hard enough for Alice In Chains.

Finally, after three days of trying to work with Greg Gilmore, Sean had enough. “Fuck this!” He took off his bandages and got behind his drumkit. He kept a bucket of ice nearby. He kept the hand iced down and played with a broken hand. It was a painful lesson he swore never to repeat. “I’m doing this broken hand or no broken hand.”

No offense to Greg Gilmore, but once Sean hit that kick drum, things changed – all of a sudden, they sounded like Alice In Chains. Sean had removed his cast about three weeks ahead of schedule and as a result, he winced every time he hit a snare drum. Aside from Sean’s mishap, Jerden thought the recording process went very smoothly.

Jerden was in Seattle for a month while they recorded the drums, bass, and basic guitar parts. Jerden and Jerry bonded over salmon fishing in the mornings before they went into the studio. The songs were well developed by the time recording sessions began. They didn’t stray from the basic tracks at all. They kept the songs as close to the way the demos sounded as possible. Jerden may have added some things here and there but he never took anything away.

Layne quickly learned from the Facelift recording sessions to perfect his vocals in one or two takes because Jerden’s production process consisted of recording five or ten takes of a song. He would sit with a pencil and notepad making notes on every bar, whether he liked it or not. He listened to every take and would composite the song using the best takes based on his notes. In 1989 and 1990, there was no click track – a signal routed into a musician’s headphones in the recording studio to serve as a metronome to keep time while recording. The timing would go up and down, but he would find the takes with the matching time signatures and edit those in.

Dave Hillis, an assistant at London Bridge Studios at the time, credits Jerden for one element of the band’s sound. The tempo on the demos was always faster. Jerden slowed the tempo down. Analyzing that now, in hindsight, it really helped develop the Alice In Chains sound, in that it became heavier with the tempo slowed down and more brooding.

The way Jerden saw it, the mid-tempo, slow-tempo stuff just sounded heavier. If, for instance, _Man in the Box_ was sped up, it wouldn’t have sounded right. A beat per minute slower or a beat per minute faster could make a big difference. It couldn’t be racing at you, it had to scare the fuck out of you before you even saw it coming. That was the mentality Jerden was going for.

Jerden and Champagne’s message to the band was, “Play it like you mean it. Play it to us. Fuck everybody else. Make us impressed, because we’ve seen it all already.”

Columbia Records released Alice In Chains' first official recording in July 1990, a promotional EP that included _We Die Young_ , _It Ain’t Like That_ , and _Killing Yourself_.

 _We Die Young_ became a hit on metal radio. After its success, Columbia Records greenlit the production on the whole album. Jerry didn’t give Jerden credit for the moodiness of the album. He said the moodiness was a direct result of the brooding atmosphere and feel of Seattle.

Jerry wrote _We Die Young_ after he had ridden a bus to rehearsal and saw kids between the ages of nine and twelve with beepers dealing drugs. The sight of a ten-year-old kid with a beeper and a cell phone dealing drugs equaled _We Die Young_ to Jerry. The song symbolized the progressively younger age people were starting to die at due to involvement with drugs, gangs, and crime.

During the actual recording of the song, Jerry held the paper with the lyrics scrawled on it while Layne sang. They were doing fine until Layne hit a bump in the way the chorus hit.

“ _Bullets seek the place to bend you over / Then you got hit / And_ –” Layne quit singing as Jerry tossed the paper away. “See, right there.”

Jerry grabbed Layne’s wrist and pulled the singer around the corner where no one could overhear their conversation. “It sounded fine to me. What’s wrong with it?”

“There’s so much money riding on this record and I have too many eyes on me, if I screw this up –” Layne started to explain.

“Johnny and James must have really screwed with your confidence. What do you need to get this done?” Jerry asked.

“Having a crowd around us while we’re on stage is one thing, but yeah, they thought they were being funny and I just can’t deal with the scrutiny while I’m trying to figure out how I want my voice for the song,” Lane replied.

“Okay, how about I get everyone out of here. It’ll just be you and me in the studio with one other person in the booth to push record when you’re ready,” Jerry suggested.

“Okay,” Layne agreed.

Jerry got every non-essential person out of the studio and after a few minutes of quietly explaining the situation to Champagne and Jerden, they agreed Jerden would run the controls in the booth. Jerry stood in Layne’s direct line of sight and held up the lyric sheet so that it blocked Layne’s view of the control room. Layne took a few minutes to work out how he wanted to sing and nailed the song in two or three takes.


	2. Man in the Box

**_Man in the Box_ **  
_Feed my eyes_  
_(Can you sew them shut?)_

Back when Layne was still in the funk band with Ron Holt and James Bergstrom, other than _It’s Coming After_ , there was another song called _Tribute_. Layne must have remembered the tune when he was working on _Man in the Box_ because the song had a similar opening guitar riff and melody to _Tribute_. Holt recognized the similarities and was actually flattered. He never sued the band for royalties or songwriting credits after Facelift came out. Nor did he exploit his connection to Layne for personal gain.

The lyrics to _Man in the Box_ came entirely from Layne even though all four members are credited for the song. The whole beat and grind of the song is when Alice In Chains started to find itself. It helped the band become what it was with Layne as the singer.

Jerden was driving to the studio one day while they were working on the song. He was mulling over the thought of a hook sound when Bon Jovi’s _Living on a Prayer_ came on the radio. The Bon Jovi hit had a prominent use of a voice box. So, the idea that a voice box could work on _Man in the Box_ was born.

Later, during an interview in 1991, Layne and Sean would criticize bands for writing about subjects they know nothing about, specifically “political stuff.” Layne would go on to say, “We write about ourselves because we know about ourselves. I’m not any authority to write on any political nothing.”

When asked what _Man in the Box_ was about, Layne replied, “Ah, shit. It’s kinda loosely based on media censorship, but only my theory. It’s not a fact or a statement.”

“It’s about veal,” Sean added.

“Plus, I was really stoned when I wrote it,” Layne said. “So, it meant something different then.”

Jerry’s view of the song was how government and media controlled the public’s perception of events in the world. They build a box around the public and feed in what the government and media what them to see. It’s about breaking out of that box and looking outside of the box that’s been built for them.

The lyrics: “ _Feed my eyes / Can you sew them shut? / Jesus Christ / Deny your maker_ ” had gotten the band a decent amount of disapproval, to say the least, from religious people, marking it down as anti-religious.

The song ended up being one of the, if not _the_ , most well-known Alice In Chains songs even though it only peaked at number eighteen on the Billboard Album Rock Track charts.

The song was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock Performance in 1992 but lost to Van Halen’s For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge – an album that Van Halen toured on in 1991 and took Alice In Chains along with them as an opening act for six months. The video for the song was nominated for Best Metal/Rock video but lost to Aerosmith’s _The Other Side_.

Layne would run vocal scales on the way to the studio with his bandmates in the car. But, when it came to the playback in the control room, he discovered he didn’t like to be around when others heard what he had done. The last thing he wanted was to have Jerden or Champagne ask why he chose a particular style. Personally, he would test out different ways of singing a song and if he liked what his voice was doing that was the style he went with.

When they did the video – directed by Layne, who also later directed the video for _Angry Chair_ – they had to censor the lyric: _Buried in my shit_ and _shove my nose in shit_. However, Layne must have taken offense to censoring the lyrics for MTV, because when he sang it live, he always put more emphasis on those lines. Jerry had also directed a couple of videos as well – _Sea_ _of Sorrow_ and later _Rooster_. The band had put in their contract that anything that was done, no matter who directed it, had to go through them and get their approval before it was released to the public.

Jerden expensed about six hundred and some odd dollars buying a six-string bass to make the choruses on the songs sound heavier and the voice box used for _Man in the Box_. If the band bought anything else, he wasn’t privy to it. However, Susan Silver seemed to be the only one to think Mike Starr bought a lot of gear. The other members of the band and the studio assistants refuted that claim because as far as they knew Starr didn’t buy much of anything in the way of gear and Jerry bought strings and picks.

Somehow a club party ended up at the band house. An entire crowd of people was milling around the house. Sean and Mike were mingling and making sure nothing got broken. Jerry and Layne had surreptitiously snuck away from the hordes to Layne’s bedroom upstairs.

Layne was straddled over Jerry’s hips as they shared kisses and rocking their groins against each other. Jerry rubbed his hands up and down Layne’s back as he nipped teasingly at Layne’s lips. He caressed Layne’s face. They laughed softly when Jerry lightly tugged on Layne’s goatee. Layne caressed the skin under Jerry’s shirt. Jerry let out a low groan when Layne ground against him. His hand skimmed down Layne’s back and inside the back of the singer’s worn jean cut-offs.

Layne massaged Jerry’s cock through his shorts. Even through the stiff material, he could feel how hard the guitarist was for him. Layne moved to suck a claiming mark on Jerry’s neck. Jerry didn’t stop him. The guitarist wasn’t even thinking of what would happen if Courtney or anyone else saw the hickey. At that moment, all he cared about was Layne and the immediate gratification they were both chasing. Jerry returned the favor by sucking his own mark on Layne’s neck. One minute they were kissing, grinding, and making out and the next minute stroking hands were working each other towards an orgasm while they shared breaths and moans, all the while the music and loud discussions drifted into the room from downstairs via the hole Layne had cut out of his bedroom floor.

Ronnie Champagne stopped by the house. He walked around the melee dumbfounded. The chaotic atmosphere left him in a daze. He watched as one girl went to a bedroom on the first floor – which happened to be Jerry’s – to have sex. When she left, another girl went to the bedroom with Mike. Sean’s alter ego Steve was out in full force. Sean’s “other half” had no clue he was in a band or knew he had the ability to play the drums as well as Sean. Just then, Layne and Jerry appeared.

“Hey man, glad you could make it,” Jerry greeted.

“Yeah, thanks,” Ronnie looked around. “When you all throw a party, you mean it.”

“Yep,” Layne agreed as he smiled at Demri who joined them.

Demri glared in the direction that Mike disappeared. Courtney was on the other side of the room in a conversation but looked over and glared at Layne when she saw him with Jerry. Ronnie stood there taking this all in. Courtney seemed jealous of Jerry’s relationship with Layne. He got the impression that Demri didn’t like that Mike was such a womanizer because he might be a bad influence on Layne. Jerry and Layne seemed to have marks on their necks that were only noticeable up close under the long hair hanging over their shoulders, but because they came from the direction of the kitchen Ronnie was oblivious to the fact that they had just come from a make-out session of their own.

From what Ronnie knew, Layne was not using heroin at the time. However, he’d heard unconfirmed rumors that Demri was using. People who knew Demri well did not know when or how her heroin use started. The hard-partying side of the band would take some getting used to.


	3. Sea of Sorrow

**_Sea_** ** _of Sorrow_**  
_Lines cut across my face_  
_Why you laugh at my disgrace, I'll never know_  
_How far to go to reach that place_

_Sea of Sorrow_ became a curse. Writing and recording the song wasn’t a problem. It was everything that came after it. Before the band was signed to a major label, the song was getting regular airplay on the local radio station KISW. Then the director of Father Rock had an idea to make a video for it, but then scrapped the whole thing and joined the military. After the fiasco with the Seattle Art Institute selling their “homemade” video for _We Die Young_ to the label and some dumbass in the A&R department releasing it to MTV without the band’s consent which pissed them off, the guys decided they were going for a bona fide music video director this time and tapped Paul Rachman to do the video.

What Rachman did to the video and the song was choppy at best. He took a hacksaw to the song itself. Two minutes were cut from the song. The second part of Jerry’s guitar solo was completely eliminated as was the entire second verse.

Rachman had helped Layne direct _Man in the Box_ , so they figured he could do a video for _Sea_ _of Sorrow_. The first – and ultimately discarded – version was in color and featured the band playing under multicolored spotlights. Layne had his braids cut off on one side, leaving the remaining braids in a “comb-over” hairstyle.

When the band was shown the finished product, no one liked it. The day before they reshot the video, Jerry and Layne went to a Pantera concert where Layne dislocated his shoulder jumping off the stage. Jerry had been friends with Dimebag Darrell and Vinnie Paul since he met them in a club in Texas when he was eighteen about a year before he returned to Seattle and met Layne.

The second version of the video was directed by Martyn Atkins, also had two minutes cut out of it and shot mostly in black and white. Segments of the color video were used in the black and white version, often blending into color from monochrome. There was some editing involved to make the final video appear seamless. By the time they shot the second version Layne had cut all his braids off and had a more even hairstyle.

All the girlfriends were invited to the video shoot to participate. All of them showed except Demri. She was so independent she didn’t bother to show up to support Layne from the sidelines even if she didn’t want to be in the video. Jerry sometimes wondered if even Layne knew when he was or wasn’t dating Demri. The girl refused to be addressed as ‘Layne’s girlfriend.’ It just seemed to Jerry that whatever the relationship was between Layne and Demri, she was so feminist independent she refused to be labeled as a girlfriend and she didn’t even show up to the video shoot when all the other girlfriends came to offer support for the video and participate. Because of that, Jerry spent a lot more time around Layne to show him that someone was in his corner, even when his girlfriend was more about presenting her “I-am-woman-hear-me-roar” independence.

“If I have to sing that song again I’ll puncture my eardrums,” Layne grumbled. He still had the sling on his arm.

“I didn’t think it was too bad,” Jerry mused.

“ _You_ wanted to turn it into a spaghetti western! I don’t look good in chaps,” Sean groused.

“If that one guy hadn’t have flaked out on us, he was going to turn my part into a comedic role,” Mike offered. Sean and Layne glared at him.

“I’m sorry Demri couldn’t make it to the video shoot,” Jerry said softly. Layne shrugged his good shoulder but didn’t say anything.

 _Sea of Sorrow_ may have been Jerry’s baby, but Layne and Sean agreed they hated the song now. If they don’t play it for a year live, it would still be too soon. Ever since they decided to make a video for it, pretty much everything that could have gone wrong did go wrong.

“Well, here’s to the next video we decide to do,” Jerry said and held up his arms to shield his face as Sean, Layne and even Mike threw pillows at Jerry.

When later asked about the video, Layne said it was a nightmare to make. Mike added that it took too long, almost double the shooting time. They had a day off from the Clash of the Titans tour thinking it would be no more than twelve hours and ended up being closer to twenty-four hours. They had to rush a bunch of shots that were important to the video. Layne wore a leather jacket to cover the sling he wore from his accident at the Pantera concert. By the end of the shoot, Layne and Sean hated the song because they had to play it so many times in making the video from the start of the first version to the end of the second version.

Later, in 1999, during the interview with _Rockline_ when the band was promoting the Nothing Safe and the Music Bank box set, the host asked about _Sea_ _of Sorrow_.

“That’s Layne’s favorite song,” Jerry laughed.

“We should do an album of every version of _Sea of Sorrow_ ,” Layne suggested.

Layne had to sing so many different versions of the song by the time all was said and done. He took it a step further and suggested other bands try to cover all the different versions he had to sing.


	4. Bleed the Freak

**_Bleed the Freak_ **  
_I’d like to see_  
_How you all would bleed for me_

“Taking on a lot of biblical metaphors aren’t you?” Layne asked as he skimmed the lyrics.

Jerry sat at the kitchen table eating cereal with a spoon in one hand and a pen in the other scrawling over notebook paper. Layne sat next to him, glancing over to read whenever Jerry jotted down a line.

“Is this a song about religious hypocrisy?” Layne asked.

“The song is us against the world and the people who put you down. It’s saying: ‘I put up with many years of you putting us down and watching us bleed, now I’d like to see you bleed some back,’” Jerry explained between bites of his breakfast.

“ _My cup runneth over / Like blood from a stone_ ,” Layne recited.

“It’s a reference to the book of Psalms,” Jerry commented.

“I know what it is. What does it mean to you for this song?” Layne asked.

“I mean for it to be sarcastic, saying that no, we aren’t doing great. It’s setting up the other religious metaphors to come in the song,” Jerry replied.

“By the looks of it, you stayed up late scouring the Bible,” Layne chuckled.

“I was raised by a mother and grandmother. So, yes, I’m very well versed in the Bible,” Jerry said.

“Mom was lucky to get me into Sunday school. But, I have a firm grasp of my spirituality. I can’t say if my lifestyle will lead to eternal damnation or anything. I guess I’ll see what happens when I get there,” Layne said nonchalantly.

“Let’s hope that isn’t for a good long while, huh?” Jerry said with a raised brow.

“ _When the sin lies bolder / I’ll pluck out thine eye_ ,” Layne read changing the subject.

“Matthew 18:9,” Jerry said.

“Something about plucking out your own eye if you stumble or something to that effect,” Layne said trying to remember the verse.

“Yeah, my way of sarcastically mocking society’s moral standards,” Jerry explained.

When they got to the studio, Layne disappeared into the lounge to play video games until Jerry needed him. Jerry ran the song by Sean and Mike and showed them the music he had in mind for the piece. Jerry did his guitar parts first. Mike added the bass parts, picking up the melody and then Sean. When Jerry called Layne in to do the vocals, Jerry was playing with the band’s camcorder. They had accumulated a stack of home movies behind the scenes at the studio, in tour buses and hotel rooms as well as some footage of the club shows.

Layne was working on trying new ways to sing the song until he got his voice where he wanted it. Jerry was running the camcorder when he pointed it in the direction of the closed-off room Layne used to record his vocals. The door was ajar and he could see Layne.

“ _When the pig runs slower / Let the arrow fly / When the sin lies bolder / I’ll pluck out thine eye_ ,” Layne was singing the harmony, only it was coming out in a jazz tune. Jerry cracked up laughing and Layne looked over to see him with the camcorder. Layne grinned and nodded his head at the camcorder.

When it came to the third verse, Layne did something Jerry wasn’t expecting but he actually liked it. Instead of singing the verse, Layne quietly spoke the verse into the microphone, “ _All these things that you’ve done for me / Have left me so FUCKING TIRED / I’m not saying that you haven’t done a lot of good / But if there’s one thing you can do / You can BLEED FOR ME, BLEED FOR ME_.”

At the end of the song, Jerry cheered. Layne did awesome with the song. Jerry couldn’t wait to hear it on playback. Jerry put down the camcorder and nearly tripped over the equipment in the studio to get to the control room.

“Did _anyone_ get that on tape? Anyone? That sounded great, screw you wanting to do it seven or eight more times, Dave,” Jerry said. “Ronnie play that back.”

The music filled the room. Then the opening lines filtered through and Layne’s vocals were soft and smooth, not trying too hard or overdone. Then, the chorus kicked in and Layne’s strong, powerful voice was there. Every line was delivered like Layne meant every word Jerry wrote. If Jerry hadn’t already fallen in love with Layne’s voice before now, _Bleed the Freak_ would have definitely shifted him that way.

Jerry was so ecstatic about how the song turned out. He immediately went into the studio, reworked a few guitar parts, and added his backing vocals.

After they were done for the day, Ronnie Champagne went to a club with the band members. As they were about to leave the club, Champagne saw Layne go in the bathroom, light a paper towel on fire, and throw it in the garbage can.

“Run!” Layne yelled as he flew past him on his way out the door.

“Shit, Layne! You crazy son of a bitch!” Champagne said as he chased Layne out of the club.

They left and piled into Layne’s car – a station wagon he borrowed from his mother. The whole time Ronnie hung around Alice In Chains outside of the studio it seemed like everywhere they went, they were running for their lives to get out of wherever they were.


	5. I Can't Remember

**_I Can’t Remember_ **   
_'Scuse the 'tude but I haven't eaten today  
And my eyes are turning grey_

The song _I Can’t Remember_ helped Alice In Chains find its sound. Of all the songs they demoed and played live, _I Can’t Remember_ made it through Jerry hastily scribbling it on a paper. It made it through the early club days when Jerry was booking their gigs before they even thought of shopping around for a manager and record contract.

The song had always been interpreted as a song about Layne’s relationship with his mother when he was a kid. The lyrics: _Turn around, you say / ‘Scuse the ‘tude, but I haven’t eaten today / And my eyes are turning grey_ came from a time when Layne was around fifteen. He had taken off for a day. It was dark and rainy that night and Layne’s mom and stepdad, Jim Elmer, got a call from the Lynnwood Police Department informing them that Layne was at the station and asking for them to pick him up. He had _not_ been arrested or detained. Layne’s stepdad had a soft spot for him and wanted to go get him, but Nancy being the disciplinarian told the police that he walked down there, he could walk back home and dinner would be waiting for him.

“He may not want to do that,” the officer said.

“Well, _you_ can bring him home or you can tell him. We’ve made it real clear, he knows where his home is,” Nancy stated. “Just tell him his dinner is waiting and his waterbed is ready.”

Layne walked home, ate his dinner, and went to bed. He never ran away again. Nancy and Jim agreed it was the best thing to do. They were trying to get through to Layne that he couldn’t just have his way in the family, running away and expecting everything to be okay with them picking him up and taking care of him. He had to take responsibility for himself.

Layne had a few arguments with Nancy while he was growing up, but when he discovered his passion for singing and decided that was what he was going to do, Nancy was very supportive.

Layne’s mom and stepdad bought him a small VW Dasher when he was seventeen or eighteen and that was his transportation to and from gigs with his band Sleze.

Because he had younger sisters, Jim and Nancy decided that if Layne was doing drugs, he needed to move out of the house. He tried staying with his bandmates, but Bergstrom’s mother didn’t approve of their music. Johnny Bacolas’ mother continually prayed for all of them. But, after he bounced around for a while Layne ended up at the Music Bank, got a job letting bands into the rooms and locking up when their left. Then, he met Jerry Cantrell at a house party and the rest is history.


	6. Love Hate Love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now the reason you have a span of 1990-1996 in this chapter is that Demri never left Layne alone. Even if he wanted to move on from her whenever they broke up, he never could because she would be around him looking for drugs and screwing with his head and heart in a number of ways. Demri fans say she broke up with him "to give him a chance to live a life" but she still put herself in his orbit, so he COULDN'T move on and live a life. Fans on Layne's side that have turned their relationship into a sacred, hallowed relationship, say he broke up with her to get her to want to get clean so they could be married. He could have wished upon a million stars that she married him, but she would never give up the drugs any more than he would have.

**_Love Hate Love_ **  
_Cheating myself, still, you know more_  
_It would be so easy with a whore_

_Love Hate Love_ was written from the perspective of a sociopath.

The lyrics: _I want to peel the skin from your face / Before the real you lays to waste_ was not meant to be literal. In contrast, he wanted to preserve his perception of Demri before she revealed her true self and he can no longer see her the same way. Although many people get upset about issues in a relationship, he just wanted to put his rose-tinted glasses back on and ignore what she really is, and love her even though she only hurts him.

Layne wrote the song about his tumultuous relationship with Demri. There was cheating on both sides. Some say that they had an open relationship, but that didn’t mean Layne wasn’t emotionally hurt every time he saw another guy completely smitten in love with her at first sight. How many times did Layne come back home from being on tour to find one guy after another puppy love-tattoo-you-on-my-chest in love with Demri at first sight? Demri’s friends thought Layne should have lain down and taken that because he deserved it for screwing groupies on the road. Layne had confronted a couple of the guys who were smitten with Demri, letting them know he knew something was going on between said guy and Demri.

Demri even hit on Mark Lanegan when they met outside a Seattle drug den. He was going in as she was coming out. She invited him to her place and by Lanegan’s account, he hadn’t met Layne personally then. He would have taken her up on it, but his girlfriend at the time was a friend of Demri, so he turned her down. Of course, he met Layne later and still didn’t help matters when it came to Layne’s addiction.

There a few stories of her on the road with him where the first thing she thought of was scoring junk before anything else. Her friends thought _no one_ was allowed to side with Layne against her for what she did to him with the drugs and cheating on him, but he was lower than a snake for what he did to her with the drugs and cheating on her.

When he told her he wouldn't get her any more drugs, she just turned around and shacked up with the next guy who would do what she wanted. Her family called Layne back home from GERMANY where he was on tour in support of the Dirt album for a damn intervention with her. The funny thing was: Layne hated interventions. He claimed they never worked. But he did it for Demri.

Another instance happened during the 1991 Van Halen tour when Layne had sent Demri out for cocaine and she came back with heroin. There’s a possibility that while touring with Van Halen was when Layne was introduced to heroin. It wasn't like Demri was headed for a life in a convent when she met Layne and on the day she was to take her holy orders, Layne corrupted her. She already knew how to get drugs when they met.

Layne could have wished upon a star a million times over that she would have married him, but she wasn't going to give up the drugs any more than Layne would have, so there was no way in hell she was marrying him. But, she kept stringing him along even after they broke up for good in 1994 – even though there is also a debate between Demri fans and Layne fans about who broke up with who and for what reason. Every time he tried to move on and focus on something else, Demri would always come back looking for drugs and completely mess with his head with “maybes” and “could bes” and “would have beens” and “could have beens”. He swore he would never date another woman if he wasn’t with her and she kept hanging around the studio in 1995 and early 1996 until she shacked with an older guy before she died. 

Discussing the title track _Dirt_ , Cantrell stated that “the words Layne put to it were so heavy, I've never given him something and not thought it was gonna be the most bad-assed thing I was going to hear.” Layne said he wrote the song “to a certain person (Demri) who basically buried my ass.”

In an interview with the Canadian magazine _M.E.A.T._ in December 1992, Layne Staley said about the cover for Dirt: “This album cover... I like to refer to it as “revenge.” The woman on the album cover is kinda the portrayal of that person (Demri) being sucked down into the dirt (laughs), instead of me. The picture is the spitting image of her (Demri), and that wasn't even planned. Actually, I was pretty angry about it when I first saw it – she's not happy about it either (laughs). It was real eerie. The girl on the album cover is really Mariah O'Brien _not_ Demri.

Demri had two heart surgeries that Layne paid for and two lung surgeries. It’s not known if Layne paid for the lung surgeries. It all stemmed from endocarditis that she contracted through intravenous drug use. There's also a section in Mark Lanagen's book, where _Demri_ , after one of the heart surgeries, she shows up on Lanegan's doorstep looking for junk in her hospital gown and still attached to an IV pole, having come from the recovery room _after_ they put a pacemaker in her body due to endocarditis! Can't see how anyone, least of all _Lanegan_ kept that stunt from Layne.

Whenever _Love Hate Love_ was performed live, Layne would introduce it in many different ways depending on how he felt about Demri that day. One time he would say it was the closest thing to a love song Alice In Chains had. Another time, it was a song about someone who fucked him up, so he paid her back and screwed with her.

One of the best-known stories of her messing with Layne is: the singer of the Derelicts, Duane Lance Bodenheimer. At one point, Layne walked up to him and said, “I need to talk to you.”

By 1990-91, Bodenheimer had met Demri through mutual friends and she made such an impression on him that he developed a crush on her. They started hanging out and she was a very sexual girl. He really tried not to get involved with her because he knew Layne, but one night, things happened and they slept together. They fell into a relationship where drugs were involved. While Layne was gone on tour, Demri and Bodenheimer would hang out at another local musician’s home and do drugs. They became close and Bodenheimer fell in love with Demri.

Not surprisingly, Layne didn’t like Bodenheimer at all and had his suspicions. At some point, Layne called Bodenheimer to a local musician’s house and confronted him. “If you’re fucking my woman, why don’t you tell me?”

Bodenheimer denied it, because he wasn’t proud of it. But Demri and Bodenheimer kept seeing each other behind Layne’s back – mostly while Layne was on tour, but occasionally when Layne was in town. Their relationship was an open secret. Layne again called Bodenheimer on it, telling Bodenheimer he knew what was going on.

“You could have told me the first time you were sleeping with my girlfriend,” Layne said. “You’re not a good person. You’re a piece of shit.”

Granted, Layne wasn’t a model of virtue and fidelity himself. According to David Duet, Layne and Demri had kind of an open relationship. In the position he was in, it’s probably the only way he could’ve had a lasting relationship. Layne was very true to Demri in his heart, but he had a lot of wild touring adventures.

According to Bodenheimer, Demri was aware of Layne’s flings on tour. She hinted that they had an open relationship. She would complain to him sometimes that she knew he was probably fucking other girls. But, beyond that, she never said anything bad about him. At one point, Bodenheimer went to Denver to visit his parents. Demri spent a week and a half there with him. When they got back to Seattle, it was different. She explained in a letter that Bodenheimer had since lost that Layne was her white knight and Bodenheimer was her dark knight.

At the **_Singles_** shoot where Alice In Chains had two club scenes, Bodenheimer and Layne sat at a table. Layne, whose long-built-up jealousies and frustrations, finally reaching a boiling point, tore into him. “You’re a piece of shit. It should have been you that died instead of Andy Wood. I fucking hate you.”

Layne made the comment knowing full well that Bodenheimer was a heroin user, and it came a little more than a year after Andy Wood’s fatal overdose. Bodenheimer was shocked. He was hurt. It wasn’t like he was a total dick. He did have feelings. He felt bad about fucking Demri, but he couldn’t help being in love with Demri. Layne’s comment didn’t stop him from continuing the relationship with Demri either.

Bodenheimer later heard from a friend who attended the Clash of the Titans show at Red Rocks that Layne introduced a song – he didn’t know which one – saying words to the effect of, “This is about Duane Bodenheimer, scummy drug junkie.”

Every band had the one definitive song that every other song they do is measured by. For Led Zeppelin, it was _Stairway to Heaven_. For Alice In Chains, it’s _Love Hate Love_. It’s the longest song on the Facelift album at six minutes and fifty-something seconds, but played live could go on for seven and a half or eight minutes if Layne really wanted to drag it out.

Jerry called _Love Hate Love_ the masterpiece of Facelift, adding about the song that Layne’s vocals are amazing and that it features one of his favorite guitar solos he ever performed. Every tortured piece of Layne’s soul went into this amazing song. The place where he was emotionally and mentally was nowhere anyone would want to be. He suffered enormously if the tone, sound, and delivery of _Love Hate Love_ were anything to go by.

Layne slowed _Love Hate Love_ down so much from the few times they had performed it live. Jerry found that perfect tortured guitar tone to go with the dark lyrics. It always gave it a Lord Byron feel to the song: dark, beautiful, and mysterious with just a little danger thrown in. The lyrics were born from Layne knowing Demri was cheating on him behind his back.

It made Jerry want to be closer to Layne to look after him.

That being said, a frequent hangout for the band was the Vogue. One night the bathroom stalls were so full, women were using the men’s room. At that point, Layne and Jerry decided it was easier to go outside. They were in the parking lot urinating when a woman sitting in the car behind where they were standing turned her headlights on. 

Layne or Jerry turned around and peed on the engine hood of the car. The woman was furious and started yelling. She followed them inside, still screaming. At that point, everyone bolted out of the club. Layne went into getaway-driver mode, got the station wagon he borrowed from his mother and drove up and down the street picking people up. According to Ronnie Champagne, people were chasing them trying to jump in the car. It happened almost every time they went to the Vogue. It got bad enough that Champagne started going to Vogue by himself.

In the band’s defense, Jerry said, “We just got together to have fun, get drunk, go to parties, and be the best band we could. Be the best band in Seattle was what our goal was because that was our world up to that point. We accomplished that goal and it got a whole lot bigger.” -- Jerry Cantrell, 1995

“We _all_ partied, man, so to point the finger at Layne — might as well point the finger at all of us. Unfortunately, he's the lead singer, and the lyrical content of what he was writing – he was putting it out there. I always thought that was very brave of him, and I always stood behind that. It's the type of thing that we always supported ourselves in – going _all the way_ with it, whether it was good or bad. I mean about expressing it artistically. We dicked around – I don't think none of us can say we didn't try it, in one form or another. I was first introduced to it in Europe on one of our first tours. There was, like, two days missing that I don't remember very clearly – except all of us being very ill on a bus. I guess it's something that spoke to Layne, but his experience wasn't anything different than ours. We all had our little vices. If you fuck around with that long enough, it's going to turn on you.” – Jerry Cantrell, **_Grunge is Dead: The Oral History of Seattle Rock Music_**


	7. It Ain't Like That

**_It Ain’t Like That_ **  
_Here I sit writing on the paper  
Tryin’ to think of words you can't ignore_

The sessions at London Bridge Studios wrapped up in December 1989. Layne and Demri were getting along enough to show up at Layne’s family’s home with presents. It was the first time Layne had money to buy Christmas presents.

The band, Jerden, and Champagne relocated to Los Angeles after the holidays to finish the album, mainly vocals and guitar overdubs. They had just rebuilt Capitol Records Studio A. Bryan Carlstrom was an assistant working at Capitol Records, floating between three different projects at the time, one of them being Facelift. Carlstrom had not heard of the band before they came to the studio. Because he was hearing only bits and pieces of the record, he hadn’t really formed much of an opinion on the band. Outside of the studio, Carlstrom hung out and smoked pot with Layne. Carlstrom’s impression at the time: Kind of a Birkenstock hippyish kid, really skinny, pretty innocent kid, to tell the truth. He looked really young, really childlike. He had a goatee with a couple of beads in it, very childlike.

 _It Ain’t Like That_ came out of a riff that Jerry cited as a cool mistake. The lyrics could be traced back to the band's disillusionment with Los Angeles. They were wide-eyed kids from Seattle headed to Los Angeles – the city of angels. When they got to Los Angeles, it was not what they expected. The godfather of rock and roll Bill Gazzarri was a white-hatted geezer who owned Gazzarri’s nightclub and surrounded himself with rock groupies. He was like Hugh Hefner if Hefner was trying too hard to be himself.

The Sunset Strip that had been the haunt of Van Halen, The Doors, Motley Crue, Poison, and Guns N’ Roses was nothing like the club circuit they played in Seattle. The 1980s music scene that clubs on the Sunset Strip thrived on for a decade was dying out. Compared to the Sunset Strip in 1989-90, the Central Tavern looked like a nightclub in the Ritz Hotel. The lyric: _Sign the deal, set in motion / Smaller fish, so huge the ocean_ had not been a more appropriate description of their situation.

Champagne described the remodeled Studio A as “a million-dollar coffin,” meaning that if you went into the middle of the room – which was about the size of a gymnasium – and spoke, you could see your words stop in the air like a cartoon word bubble. He had Layne go out in the middle of the room with only a stool to place a water bottle, an ashtray, and his sunglasses.

“Turn the lights down low so you can barely see me,” Layne told Champagne.

Champagne, who was in the control room, agreed. “Okay, I got to turn down the control room lights, too, so you can barely see me.”

With the lights turned down low so that only shadows could be seen, Layne nailed his vocals on the first take pretty much every time. Jerry was the same way. According to Jerden, when he did the lead vocals, he doubled them. Then any harmonies they did, which was not extensive, they’d just do maybe a third harmonic harmony, but they weren’t the stacked vocals that came out on Dirt. But, it is where Layne learned to stack his own vocals on later albums and projects.

Phil Staley, having seen Layne on the cover of a magazine was now back in his son’s life. The opportunistic father came to the studio while Layne was recording his vocals. From Champagne’s point-of-view, there may have been an element of surprise to the visit. Layne was happy to see him. Of course, soon after this visit was when father and son did drugs together.

But, before then, Phil beamed with pride after hearing Layne sing. He turned to Champagne and asked, “Man, where the fuck did he learn how to do that? I just got the chills!”

Later, the band was sitting around the control room during a break. Mike was playing with the camcorder. Jerry and Sean were on the couch. Layne and Jerden in the chairs at the control panel.

“Okay, so we’re done right?” Sean asked. “Let’s get this album done today. I got a date tomorrow. I can’t come in.”

“Let’s just fucking – I mean,” Jerry picked up the paper with the list of songs they’d done so far. “They can’t tell us what to print – this fucking, these seven songs are good enough. Let’s do a seven-song album. Fuck it.” Everyone laughed.

“An EP,” Layne chuckled.

“Let’s do an EP first, instead,” Sean chimed in.


	8. Sunshine

**_Sunshine_ **   
_Am I your reflection?  
Melting mirror smile  
Am I worth the value?  
Do my love defile?_

_Sunshine_ was one of the first songs Jerry ever wrote when Alice In Chains was still running around the club circuit as Diamond Lie. The band had played it a lot in those early days of their formation. It was a song that made it through club shows, numerous demo tapes and now it had a place on the Facelift album.

Jerry was the oldest of three kids when his parents divorced. His dad, Jerry Cantrell, Sr. was in the military and moved around a lot. His brother went to live with his dad. Jerry and his sister stayed with his mother, Gloria, and his grandmother.

His dad’s side of the family enjoyed music, but his mother's side had the musical talent. His mother and aunt played the organ and they had a little Wurlitzer in the house. His mom and uncle played clarinet. His grandmother played the accordion and melodica, which is like a keyboard that you blow into. They were Norwegian-Czechs and very musical. They would watch Lawrence Welk and any musical show. His parents were big country music fans. Anything musical was celebrated in their house.

Jerry got his first guitar from his mother, which was around the time Fleetwood Mac’s Rumors album came out. It was one of Jerry’s favorite records of all time. His mother was dating a guy who’d play guitar while she played the organ. The boyfriend showed Jerry a few chords, and he played a song within the first ten minutes. So the boyfriend suggested that his mother get Jerry a guitar.

His mother’s answer was to get him a little Spanish, nylon-string acoustic guitar. Jerry messed around with it for a couple of months and it ended up in the back of the closet. He wanted an electric guitar like his heroes.

When Jerry was a kid, he had a little Dr. Seuss **_My Book About Me_** book. He would fill it in, and in the section about what you want to be when you grow up, there were pictures of policemen, firemen, and stuff. His said ‘rock star!’

When he was in eighth grade, he went to live with his dad who was stationed in Pennsylvania at the time. Jerry and his brother moved to Pennsylvania with him. Jerry cut out a picture of a Les Paul electric guitar and put it on his Christmas list taped to the outside of his bedroom door with a note that said: “This is all I want.” Being an ungrateful kid, he was really disappointed when he opened the guitar-shaped present to find it was another acoustic guitar.

Jerry voiced his frustration and his dad said, “You get fucking good on that thing and I’ll buy you a Les Paul. But learn how to play that first.”

Jerry played around with it for a couple of months and it went the same way as the Spanish guitar his mother got for him – in the back of the closet. He only really got the bug when he got his hands on an electric guitar.

He and his cousin Kyle used to go to swap meets and flea markets. Kyle popped up one day with an electric guitar and a Sound Design console stereo with a radio receiver, an 8-track tape player, and a turntable on top, two speakers, and a guitar jack in the back. The guitar itself was beaten up. It had two strings on it. It looked like a bastardized Mustang with a weird headstock. The guitar had an E and A string so he could still make a bar chord. Jerry would hide the guitar when his cousin came over looking for it. He would stay in his bedroom and try to learn to play it.

One day, his mother came in and asked, “You’re not going to give this up, are you?”

“Nope,” Jerry said confidently.

“Well, let’s get the thing fixed for you so you can play it properly,” his mother said.

There were new tuning pegs, new strings, and the action was fixed on it. It ended up being a good guitar for his first electric guitar. As he grew up and other guitars came and went, he lost his first guitar and the Sound Design stereo along the way.

Jerry had asked his mother once, “Why didn’t you take us to church? What am I? Am I Christian? Am I Lutheran? What?” and she replied, “I wanted you to make up your mind for yourself. You be whatever you want to be. You be what makes sense to you.” That was cool with him.

When Jerry graduated high school, his mother told him to either get a job or go to school. So to have more time to play the guitar he enrolled in Tacoma Community College. One of the kids he grew up and went to college with was Vincent Charles Pusateri (Vinnie Chas of the glam metal band Pretty Boy Floyd) and a guy named Jim Siphers who was a drummer.

In 1986, Vinnie and Jim were bugging Jerry one day in a class they shared. “We need to quit college for a year and go to Texas, go to Dallas. My dad will get us a job. We’ll get paid good and try to make it in a band. There’s a bunch of clubs down there. The scene’s great.”

After a few weeks of Vinnie and Jim winding Jerry up about quitting college, Jerry grabbed all the books he had from all his classes, took them up, and slammed them down on the teacher’s desk with the test they were taking on top of them. “Here’s my books. I’m quitting.”

“This will affect your grade,” the teacher warned.

“You don’t understand. I’m quitting. I’m walking out the door,” Jerry clarified.

“Dude, what the fuck?” Jim asked.

“This was your idea, I’m ready to go. Come on,” Jerry said calling his bluff.

“Let me at least finish my test. It’ll affect my grade,” Jim whined.

“Fuck you, let’s go,” Jerry said.

Jerry did relent and let Jim take one more test before they left for Texas. When they got to Dallas, Vinnie’s dad put them to work in his insulation company. They did asbestos abatement all around the Dallas and Houston area. Jerry stayed in Texas for a year. They got paid well for blowing insulation into houses because it was a crap job no one wanted to do. So they would work all day and then go to clubs at night to check out bands.

There was a great club Cardi’s where rock bands came through all the time. Jerry got to see Yngwie Malmsteen, Talas, and Anthrax. He saw Pantera there when they still had their first singer Terry Glaze before Phil Anselmo joined the band. That was when he met Dimebag Darrell and Vinnie Paul in this little club in Houston. He’d known Vinnie Paul and Dime since he was nineteen and they stayed friends since. He didn’t meet Layne, Mike Starr, and Sean until he was twenty-one and moved back to Seattle.

Whenever Jerry would go to Oklahoma to visit his dad, he would fly into Dallas, meet up with Vinnie and Dime before going to see his dad, and then hit them up again on the way out. It would be like that up until Dime died and later Vinnie died. Jerry would go deer hunting with his dad, and they’d get a deer at Thanksgiving. By Christmas, the Cantrells would be into sausage, so Jerry’s dad would always have him drop off some deer sausage at Vinnie Paul’s house before hitting the airport back to Seattle.

In 1987, soon after Jerry moved back to Spanaway, Washington, his grandmother died. Then, his mother told him she had cancer. His mother died about five months after his grandmother died. Within the year after returning from Texas, Jerry lost his family, the house, and everything he knew.

After his mother passed away, her brother Miland told Jerry, “You have a chance here to give your dream a shot. It was your mom’s dream too to be a musician, but she never got to do that. You don’t have anything holding you down now so go for it.” It meant a lot to Jerry that he would say that.

He was bumming around Tacoma in bands and he got to the point where he had played every club to death and was looking to move on. He was just about to blow town when Layne played the Tacoma Little Theater with his band Alice N’ Chains. Jerry saw Layne perform, and as soon as he opened his mouth, Jerry thought, “Oh my God, that guy is fucking next level – I have to be in a band with him!”

When Jerry personally met Layne, they hit it off immediately. Nick Pollock, the guitarist in Layne’s band invited Jerry to a house party and told Layne about Jerry’s situation. Layne drunkenly invited him to move into the rehearsal space he was living in at the Music Bank, a fifty-room rehearsal hall and Layne got him a job there. Layne gave him clothes, food, money, guitars, and gear. He gave Jerry a band when he gave Jerry the number to Sean's girlfriend Melinda who was Mike Starr's sister. Layne was in two other bands besides jamming with Jerry, Sean, and Mike Starr. In order to get Layne to commit to his band, Jerry with the help of Sean and Starr would hold mock auditions in Layne’s space to piss him off and join them. It worked and Layne eventually committed to Jerry, Sean, and Starr. They confessed to Layne about what they’d done afterward.

After that, Jerry started writing songs . . . one of the first tunes he ever wrote was _Sunshine_ as a tribute to his mother.

He credited his mother with his heart and giving him the passion he has for the guitar and he credited his dad, who is a tenacious individual, with giving him the drive he has. His dad’s also stubborn as fuck, so nothing will knock him off his path. He does what he feels is right and that’s it. Jerry got that from him.

After the success of Facelift, in an interview with _Spin Magazine_ , Jerry said, “When I was a little kid, I’d always tell her, ‘I’ll be famous and buy you a house and you’ll never have to work again. I’ll take care of you like you took care of me.’ When she passed away, it was a really shitty time for me. I didn’t know how to deal with it then, and I still don’t. But it gave me the impetus to do what I’m doing.”

On the subject of losing his mother and grandmother in a short space of time, Jerry said, “Those losses really tilted my horizon. My whole fucking life was basically taken away from me within the period of a year, and I felt like I was on my own. I don’t know everything, and I don’t necessarily subscribe to the idea of an all-knowing God sitting up on a cloud. I get more answers from a scientific view; nothing is really destroyed, it’s just transformed, and there’s a balance to nature; a darkness and a light. When something is taken away, something is given. My grandmother and mother were such huge losses, but I got Layne, the guys, and I got _this_.” – _Kerrang!_ (December 1, 2018)

“Jerry really loved Layne [Staley]. They had a bond I haven't seen before,” Jerry’s former manager Bill Siddons, April 19, 2002 (the day Layne was found).


	9. Put You Down

**_Put You Down_ **  
_I can see what the cost will be_  
_You know, I don't need you_  
_I just can't put you down_

It’s unknown what _Put You Down_ was about. One idea is that it was about drugs, another idea is that it was about a girl Jerry dated between 1984 and 1986 since it was written by Jerry Cantrell. After recording that day, the band needed to blow off steam and asked Dave Jerden where they could find a strip club. There were strip clubs all over Los Angeles, Motley Crue names more than a few in their song _Girls, Girls, Girls_. So, Jerden sent them to the Tropicana. It was more or less a tourist strip bar.

Ronnie Champagne went with them the first time and started half of the mayhem. The first night they went to the Tropicana, Mike Starr was goofing around with one of the strippers. He had found the girl with the biggest boobs and paid her to walk up to Champagne, grab the back of his head, and shove it into her massive cleavage. When she finally released him, he was covered in the worst perfume he ever smelled. The scent was all over him.

Layne, Jerry, and Sean were trying to sweet-talk a few more girls into meeting them after their shifts. The boys had acquired a calendar featuring pictures of the girls. Jerden visited them once at the Oakwood Apartments complex where they were staying while recording. They put an X over each girl they had managed to sleep with.

During the recording sessions, the band decided to hit a couple of club gigs. One of the clubs they played at was English Acid. A lot of the Tropicana girls were in the audience at the gig.

Layne and Jerry lay in Jerry’s bed at the Oakwood Apartments Complex. Jerry kissed Layne as he settled between the singer’s legs, caressing his sides from ribs to hip. Layne reached out to caress over Jerry’s jeans and up along Jerry’s back. He pushed the guitarist back a little to sit up while still sharing a kiss, stroking Jerry’s face while Jerry reached up to comb his fingers through Layne’s hair.

Jerry fisted Layne’s hair in a light tug. He broke the kiss and looked into Layne’s blue eyes. “Please tell me you wore a condom when you were fucking the girls.”

“Yeah,” Layne said as if it should be obvious. “You had sex with them after I did. Did _you_ wear a condom with them?”

Jerry’s answer was to kiss Layne almost ravenously as he pushed Layne back to lie on the bed. The guitarist broke the kiss to move lower and suck a nipple, teasing it with his tongue as Layne watched him through lidded eyes, a hand caressing Jerry’s hair. Layne arched into the touch as Jerry kissed over his chest and stomach.

Layne shifted to make room for Jerry. Layne stroked his own dick with one hand as Jerry took his time kissing and licking over his chest and stomach, his other hand in Jerry’s long hair. Jerry moved, forcing Layne to release him as he shifted to kiss him. Jerry’s tongue mapped the inside of Layne’s mouth. Jerry released him, kissing down his chest and stomach as he moved lower between Layne’s legs.

Layne watched Jerry’s every move as Jerry wrapped a hand around his dick. Layne released his dick as Jerry started sucking on the crown even as he deftly unfastened his jeans and took them off, never stopping what he was doing. Layne stroked the base of his dick as he watched Jerry sucking him.

Jerry sucked up off Layne long enough to readjust his position so that he could suck Layne off while he reached into his underwear and stroked his own dick. After a few minutes of watching Jerry suck him, Layne sat up causing Jerry to release him. Jerry lay back on the bed. Layne reached for Jerry’s underwear-covered dick as he nuzzled into Jerry’s neck, gently nipping and sucking a hickey on his neck and nipping at Jerry’s earlobe all the while stroking Jerry through his underwear.

Jerry returned the attention, kissing Layne’s neck, his fingers delving into Layne’s hair, rocking into Layne’s touch. He sat up and lifted his hips so that Layne could pull his underwear off and threw them on the floor. Layne lay on his back with his legs spread wide. Jerry coated his dick with lube and then carefully slid into Layne like a glove. Jerry hovered over Layne as Layne stroked his dick while Jerry thrust into him at a slow, steady pace.

Jerry leaned down to kiss him as he thrust in slow and deep. Jerry broke the kiss to glance down where their bodies were joined, but he didn’t get too far as Layne’s fingers laced in his long hair. When he turned his attention back to Layne, the singer leaned up and licked along the column of his neck, Layne groaned again the skin of Jerry’s neck as the guitarist rocked into him. Luckily Mike and Sean’s rooms were on the other side of the apartment.

This was beginning to be a regular thing for them. It was something they fell into. It felt natural. Layne always called the shots and Jerry just went with it, taking his cues from Layne. If God forbid, one day Layne told him this was over, Jerry would have to go along with that too. But, for now, as long as Layne wanted to do this, Jerry was all for it. The depth of emotion he felt for Layne – he loved Courtney, she was the most beautiful girl he’d ever met. But, Layne, it was a ying-yang. Layne was his other half.

“Jerry, let up a little bit. You can’t get any deeper,” Layne said with a smile.

“Oh, sorry,” Jerry said as he went back to rocking in and out in a gentler motion.

“Are you close, babe?” Layne asked.

Jerry pressed his forehead to Layne’s as the singer stroked himself to release, the internal muscles contracting around his dick. Jerry thrust into him a few more times before carefully pulling out and stroking himself to a release, white cum streaking over Layne’s stomach.

Jerry slid off the bed and went to the bathroom to clean up, returning with a warm, wet washcloth to clean the semen off Layne’s body. Jerry disposed of the washcloth and returned to lay on the bed beside Layne. Layne didn’t comment, just rolled over close to Jerry.

“Are you really okay with what we’re doing?” Jerry asked, breaking the silence.

“Yeah. Why wouldn’t I be? If I wasn’t, I wouldn’t have started it. You and this band are the most stable thing in my life,” Layne confessed. “Don’t worry so much, Jer. I’m okay with it. I’m okay with us.”

“It’s just that Sean, Mike, and I kinda pressured you to join us,” Jerry said.

“You didn’t pressure me. You just gave me a kick in the ass to finally make a decision about joining the band. If I wasn’t that interested or didn’t care about you or what you were doing, I wouldn’t have joined no matter how much you begged,” Layne said.

Layne’s words warmed Jerry’s sentimental heart. If Layne didn’t want to be here, he wouldn’t be. But, Layne saw Jerry’s vision and decided to go above and beyond to help Jerry achieve his dream. Layne didn’t realize how much of that dream hinged on Layne finally agreeing to sing in Jerry’s band permanently. It was something that made Jerry care that much more for Layne.


	10. Confusion

**_Confusion_**  
 _Now there's time to give it all_  
I put my fears behind again  
On skinned knees we'll crawl

Layne was writing something loosely based on his relationship with Demri. The song was about a relationship. You love someone deeply, they have no time for you but yet they string you along. You reach for them or push a little, they run, on skinned knees you keep crawling after them. A relationship is full of love, sex, pain, confusion, and suffering which was in the chorus. In the second verse, you back off from that person. That person is really waiting for you to come after them like you always do and while they’re waiting they realize they love you, hence the lyric: _so you sit and think of love, I wait, hate all the more, I fall_. This time they’re crawling back to you, but they’ll go about it so it doesn’t seem that way.

“Another song about your relationship?” Jerry asked as he scanned the lyrics.

“Yeah,” Layne said, but didn’t elaborate.

“I’m proud of you man. You’re putting it out there. Sometimes music is the best therapy and a lot less expensive,” Jerry said.

Jerry had watched as Demri strung Layne along all this time. It’s what made Jerry want to be a better friend to him. If Layne wasn’t going to get a stable relationship from Demri or anyone else, Jerry would be there. It was the least he could do after all Layne had done for him over the years.

“The record company is giving us a hundred and fifty to two hundred and fifty thousand dollars as a recording budget. That’s twelve thousand, five hundred to twenty thousand, eight hundred and thirty-three dollars, and some odd cents a song. That’s a lot of pressure to come up with songs that won’t hurt the eardrums in the wrong way,” Layne pointed out.

“You haven’t given me back a bad song yet,” Jerry smiled.

“You’re biased,” Layne shot back.


	11. I Know Somethin' ('Bout You)

**_I Know Somethin’ (‘Bout You)_ **   
_Why can't I put your words away?_   
_I’d like to have more of you in my veins_

“Another vindictive song, Jer?” Layne asked as he familiarized himself with the lyrics.

“Hey, you write about drugs and your relationship, I write about getting back at the people who gave us crap and told us we didn’t have a hope in hell of making it,” Jerry replied.

“So which one is this about?” Layne asked.

“Someone that did you wrong and telling them that they’d better watch their back because you have the goods on them,” Jerry explained. He watched Layne read the lyrics. “You know, there’s quite a few songs about your relationship with Demri on this album. If you ever want to talk about it –”

“I thought you said music was cheaper than therapy?” Layne asked jokingly.

“Well, yeah. But, if you wanted to go out for a beer and just blow off some steam. You could just lay into me about it,” Jerry said.

“I don’t want to discuss what is going on with Demri, especially when I have no clue about it myself half the time,” Layne commented. “I swear she loves to twist me in knots. But, I’m fine. I’ll work it out through this.” Layne picked up the paper with lyrics written on it and tossed it back down on the table.

“Fine,” Jerry shrugged as he strummed his guitar.

Layne looked up at him. “I like how it is between you and me. We pick up the slack when the other needs help. It’ll be doomsday before I ever figure Demri out.” He grabbed the lyric sheets to the last couple of songs they wrote. “Now, can we get back to this before the record company thinks we’re wasting their money sitting here dicking around?” Layne smirked at Jerry.

“Okay,” Jerry said, dropping the subject for now.

Jerry was starting to learn when he could push Layne on certain subjects and when he couldn’t. The subject of his relationship with Demri was a toss-up: sometimes Layne would just fire both barrels at Jerry and unload what was going on and other times Jerry wouldn’t get anything until Layne wrote a lyric or a whole song about it.


	12. Real Thing

**_Real Thing_ **   
_Under the hill, with just a few notches on my belt  
Take it away, don't want no more  
Even if you say just one more  
I won't leave you alone, ooh_

_Real Thing_ was a typical song of the first period of Alice In Chains. At the beginning most of their songs dealt with relationships like _Love Hate Love_ , _Confusion_ , and death such as _We Die Young, I Can’t Remember_.

Layne explained once that _Real Thing_ was written about a friend that was using cocaine heavily. Other ideas were that in Layne’s experimenting, he had tried cocaine before or in between his earlier stints in rehab. If you skip ahead to when he wrote _Rotten Apple_ , Layne talked about how he ruined himself too young with the lethal indulgence in drugs.

Layne’s mom and stepdad or stepbrother couldn’t pinpoint when Layne exactly got into drugs. But, because he had younger sisters, his stepdad and mom decided that if Layne was doing drugs, he needed to move out of the house. He tried staying with his bandmates, but James Bergstrom’s mother didn’t approve of their music. Johnny Bacolas’ mother continually prayed for all of them. But, after he bounced around for a while Layne ended up at the Music Bank, got a job letting bands into the rooms and locking up when their left. He was kicked out of the house and met Jerry Cantrell at a house party a year later in 1987.

With the lyrics: _They said, "Son, you're gonna be a new man" / I said, "Thank you very much and can I borrow fifty bucks?"_ It is a shared thought that Layne’s 11 attempts in a rehab facility started in late 1990, but maybe he had gone to rehab earlier or the aforementioned friend told Layne what _his_ stint rehab was like.

Either way, the lyrics were about being in and out of rehab, and never able to stay clean for very long. The doctors thought his life was fixed, but he knew that he would just devolve back into his addiction.

On the album version of _Real Thing_ , at the end, Layne says, "Sexual Chocolate, baby!" That was a reference to the film **_Coming to America_** starring Eddie Murphy, whose character was the singer of a band called Sexual Chocolate. There were a few times at club shows where Layne introduced the band as "This is my band Sexual Chocolate, we play so fine don't you agree?" It had become an inside joke for the band having to do with that movie.


End file.
